A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & IISleeman, W. H. (William Henry), Sir
History
A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II
Sleeman, W. H. (William Henry), Sir
Oudh (India) -- Description and travel
They have got the lands which they hold by much fraud and violence no
doubt, but they have done much good to them. They have invited and
established in comfort great numbers of the best classes of
cultivators from other districts, in which they had ceased to feel
secure, and they have protected and encouraged those whom they found
on the land. To establish a new cultivator of the better class, they
require to give him about twenty-five rupees for a pair of bullocks;
for subsistence for himself and family till his crops ripen, thirty-
six more, for a house, wells, &c., thirty more, or about ninety
rupees, which he pays back with or without interest by degrees. Every
village and hamlet is now surrounded by fine garden cultivation,
conducted by the cultivators of the gardener caste, whom the family
has thus established.
The greatest benefit conferred upon the lands which they hold has
been in the suppression of the fearful contests which used to be
perpetual between the small proprietors of the military classes,
among whom the lands had become minutely subdivided by the law of
inheritance, about boundaries and rights to water for irrigation.
Many persons used to be killed every year in these contests, and
their widows and orphans had to be maintained by the survivors. Now
no such dispute leads to any serious conflict. They are all settled
at once by arbitrators, who are guided in their decisions by the
accounts of the Putwaries of villages and Canoongoes of districts.
These men have the detailed accounts of every tenement for the last
hundred years; and, with their assistance, village traditions, and
the advice of their elders, all such boundary disputes and
misunderstandings about rights to water are quickly and amicably
adjusted; and the landlords are strong, and able to enforce whatever
decision is pronounced. They are wealthy, and pay the Government
demand punctually, and have influence at Court to prevent any attempt
at oppression on the part of Government officers on themselves or
their tenants. Not a thief or a robber can live or depredate among
their tenants. The hamlets are, in consequence, numerous and peopled
by peasantry, who seem to live without fear. They adhere strictly to
the terms of their engagements with their tenants of all grades; and
their tenants all pay their rents punctually, unless calamities of
season deprive them of the means, when due consideration is made by
landlords, who live among them, and know what they suffer and
require.
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